LyondellBasell could exit Chapter 11 in May, list on NYSE in Q3

21 April 2010 09:55[Source: ICIS news]

SHANGHAI (ICIS news)--LyondellBasell could exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy by as early as next month and list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in the third quarter of this year, said a senior company official on Wednesday.

"The 23rd of April is an important date for us when we will ask the court [the New York bankruptcy court] to confirm our Plan of Re-organization," said Anton de Vries, senior vice president, olefins and polyolefins for Europe, Asia, and International, on the sidelines of the Chinaplas exhibition in Shanghai.

"And our stock will be traded on the NYSE within the third quarter of this year. We will become a public company," he said.

De Vries also said that major creditors had agreed to convert debt into equity.

However, he declined to give any details about the new ownership and financial structure of LyondellBasell ahead of the Friday court hearing.

"What hasn't changed throughout the Chapter 11 process is that we are a company with a good portfolio of products. We are number one [globally] in polypropylene (PP), number three in polyethylene (PE) and the world's biggest polyolefin technology supplier," he said.

"What will change post Chapter 11 is that we will have a stronger balance sheet."

Along with the debt restructuring, de Vries said that the company had implemented "very severe cost cutting, taking out 20% of our fixed costs in 2009.

"For a company of our size this is a major amount of money - you are talking about $800m-$1bn (€590m-740m).

"The cost-cutting involved everything from close to 3,000 redundancies to a reduction in contractors, closing our Chocolate Bayou cracker in the ?xml:namespace>US and polymer plants in Europe."

He added that the task now was to continue with capital discipline in order to demonstrate that LyondellBasell was a company worth investing in.